


Mother

by dinoburger



Category: LISA (Video Games)
Genre: Abandonment, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Gen, Gender Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22537663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinoburger/pseuds/dinoburger
Summary: Lisa never knew her mother. Brad can only do what he can.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	Mother

Lisa never met her. She was little more than a fable, a stack of boxes and old clothes in the corner and the words on Marty’s alcohol stinking breath. She was an image on a fuzzy old VHS tape from where Lisa watched, being pinned to her father’s lap.

She was a sad, forlorn look in her brother’s eyes whenever Lisa mentioned her.

Bradley didn’t remember much about their mother either. Long, dark hair. The way Marty used to hold her and smile.

That version of life became more distant and alien by the day, softness spoken over by the shattering of glass and a voice just as abrasive. Shrapnel, and thick fingers clutched around the back of Bradley’s throat like a vice as Marty growled through gritted teeth.

These were the memories that stained the floorboards and the bed sheets and seeped through every nook and cranny of the house.

This is the only life Lisa had ever known.

In place of her mother, it was Bradley who’d cradled her in his arms, scarcely much bigger himself at the time. Even with his little dark eyes round and bewildered, he smiled and comforted her.

It was Brad who’d listened to her first words, helped her learn to walk, brushed her hair and washed out the vomit in that grimy little bath tub.

He’d seen her bare and bruised and wouldn’t look too closely as he helped her clean off the filth, while she was still and silent. No sound but the water dripping through the black veil around her head, off her pale skin, rippling around her thin frame.

He was there on nights where Lisa could only wish of the two, that she wasn’t the pretty one. Brad wished that too.

And nights where she put her mother’s lipstick on her brother’s face instead, and they both laughed. Brad’s goofy little chuckle was one of the nicest sounds she’d ever heard.

Brad never laughed in front of Marty. Even on his ‘good’ days. He made sure these little moments were safe and special between the two of them.

Even on Marty’s ‘good’ days, Brad flinched at the hand on his shoulder, still jolted at any sound too loud or too sudden, still eyed up the space between his father’s hands and his sister’s body with unease.

He couldn’t let himself forget, couldn’t let himself forgive. He was the only thing keeping her safe. There were no good days with Marty around, only without, only when the man didn’t get up during the day, didn’t get too close. Only when Brad could dilute the damage as best he could.

Days when they could slip away from the house for a while were the best. Brad took Lisa to that big public art gallery, with the fancy statues and wallpaper. So immense and otherworldly to two small kids that it touched her dreams.

It touched her dreams the way the tap water became waterfalls. In the way that Brad could take her away from the world that hurt her and into another, one of kindness.

Brad got bigger, but his heart only grew weaker. Only laced with wounds and seams to split down all the same, the fuzz on his face starting to resemble his father’s. By the year and by the day and all the time that bled together. It was a sinking feeling he only wanted to escape.

Which is why he found himself, retreating to those boxes of things from a time long gone.

Sometimes when Brad was younger, he’d look at his mother’s old clothes. She had this beautiful blue dress with gold buttons. He swears it still smells like her, although it’s mostly dust.

The material is cool as he takes it into his hands, the world disappearing for a moment in a sweep of blue fabric being pulled down over his head.

Of course it doesn’t fit, it’s too long around his legs and too tight around his middle. But somehow, seeing himself like this is something he needed to see. Needed to know, needed to be closer.

The world he knows is polar. It’s what his mother was, the opposite of whatever Marty is, especially now. The feminine and the masculine, and wherever Brad fits into that.

But he doesn’t want to be like Marty. But he knows, in some way, he shouldn’t be allowed to anything else. Feels sure of it, and yet, he wants it anyway.

It’s everything that was once good, and it’s strange how much he wishes he could be the mother Lisa should have had.

And Lisa can’t cast judgement on him for it. Not like Marty would, or anyone else for that matter, the other boys he knows, other adults he’s seen. Lisa doesn’t know what Brad should be, or what he’s supposed to be, she only knows the Brad that is.

The Brad that tried to protect her all these years, the Brad that looked after her. Even the Brad that couldn’t, the Brad that watched helplessly and cried quietly afterwards.

That was all. He was more real to her than that old fable of the woman who’d brought her here had ever been. The woman who’d condemned her to live this life.

That fleeting image of femininity was less solid to her than this Brad, standing there in her mother’s ill-fitting dress, with this look in the worn down shadows of his eyes that she couldn’t quite understand.

And then one day, he’d disappeared too.

Lisa never met their grandfather, when he died and handed on the family dojo to the young adult Brad Armstrong. He’d been the one seeing him behind Marty’s back.

Brad had been the one to find that route of escape, and leave Lisa on her own.

Even then, he’d been growing more distant. He seemed scared to touch Lisa at all even to comfort her, like they’d done when they were little. While he’d always been quiet, it was a different sort of quiet now. He had trouble looking at her at all.

Lisa couldn’t understand, and then it was too late. Then he’d gone.

Then Marty was the only face she ever saw. Marty filled her dreams, Marty swallowed everything.

There was no amount of screaming, sobbing or wailing that could bring her brother back. Nothing was enough to express her hurt, her anger, her betrayal to be left all on her own.

All of them, her mother, Brad, Marty… all of them betrayed her. She imagined over and over, if her mother would have begged forgiveness for leaving her in this mess.

The way Brad had. This figure, dressed in blue, adorning that thick black beard.

Mother, father, sister, brother.


End file.
